The Phone

Last weekend, the morning network news show featured a family that was swearing off texting one another for a whole weekend! They’re only going to talk to each other with their voices, in person or over the phone. I am glad someone is shining a spotlight on these heroes because such a sacrifice demands major attention.

I mean, can you imagine? Having to call people to communicate with them? What is this, 1976?

Someone should check on this family to see if they made it through their SMS-less weekend. I hope they all haven't been reduced to feral animals with their primitive communication tools, which are completely unacceptable today. Their ears and eyes must ache from the horrible burden of listening and speaking.

Sometimes talking on the phone is appropriate when it’s big news, like when my Mom called yesterday with news of the birth of my nephew (!!!). Otherwise, I can only tolerate Ma Bell’s torture device through a major act of will. At work, my skin crawls when the phone rings and I have to suppress vomiting in my mouth when I’m talking. If somebody wanted to offer me a million dollars and told me I’d have to sit through a phone call to do it, I would refuse. If I am ever in physical danger and my only option is to call 911 and not text (especially on some kind of landline, barf), I will opt instead to hope I live through my injuries.

Remember when Obamacare rolled out that website that didn’t work at first and nobody could get health insurance? The phone lines worked fine but people wisely avoided calling. I can't blame them for not calling; I would have risked uncovered illness and governmental fines, too.

Don’t even talk to me about voice mail. It’s extremely inconsiderate ever to leave one in any circumstances for anyone and doing so violates the social contract. You actually expect me to go through the onerous hell of clicking up to twice on a screen and then listening to a voice? Never speak to me again.

The First Full Day of Fall

Today, Friday, Sept. 23, 2016, is the First Full Day of Fall, as the news informed me several times this morning. Since fall began yesterday, Thursday was really a Partial Day of Fall preceded by a Partial Day of Summer. Wednesday was the Last Full Day of Summer.

This means that Wednesday was all about fireworks, BBQs and pools, while today is all about gourds, earth tones and #PSL.

Tomorrow we will celebrate the Second Full Day of Fall. It will also be the start of the First Full Weekend of Fall, since Friday is partially a workday and thus, cannot be considered a full weekend day. (Last weekend we marked the Last Full Weekend of Summer.) On Monday we will begin the First Full Work Week of Fall.

Then on Oct. 1, we will mark the beginning of the First Full Calendar Month of Fall. This is different from the First Month of Fall, which begins today and ends Oct. 22. Columbus Day weekend will be the First Three-Day Holiday Weekend of Fall. Thanksgiving will, for some lucky people, be the First Four-Day Weekend of Fall.

Dec. 20 will be the Last Full Day of Fall, followed by a Partial Day of Fall on Dec. 21, followed by winter. Then it will be spring. Then summer. Then fall again.

In conclusion, fall is also known as “autumn.”

Department Stores

The way department stores have those registers scattered in different departments is annoying. I know they don’t have one big line of registers as a way of saying “We’re classier than Wal-Mart” but it’s just inefficient. Shopping for me is a means to an end so I want everything to be brutally efficient; I couldn’t care less about the atmosphere of the store so I think everything should be an assembly line.

I was in a department store recently to buy a gift card (after three other supermarkets and drugstores did not have said gift card) and it was aggravating because I got behind somebody who had a lengthy transaction. At the supermarket or a store with one big line, you could easily see which cashier had a shorter line and go there. But in a department store, you can’t see to the other registers scattered throughout so by the time you get there, the line could be even longer, and then your day is totally ruined.

It doesn’t help that the register at a department store is the site of the slowest business transactions that are physically possible. Nobody is ever in a hurry. People dump their on-clearance dickeys on the register and it’s a big, chatty experience of asking if they have a coupon or a store credit card and would you like to open a credit card and how the weather is and whatever else pops into your head. Would you like the receipt in the bag? May I hand your credit card back to your right hand or left? Both questions require deliberation to answer. Then the cashier, with the unhurried, ceremonial care of a soldier folding a flag and giving it to a widow at her veteran husband’s funeral, unfurls the plastic bag and puts the clothing inside.

Then I’m bringing up the rear with one item and my credit card already out and ready to swipe.

It doesn’t help that I’m always behind someone with some complicated return and since most department stores don’t have a separate customer service line, everyone has to wait behind them. Then the return takes as long as negotiating the Korean War peace treaty. I have one item.

… Look, I apologize. I know this was a dumb topic and it only reheats my consistent themes of being impatient with everyone around me and finding fault with everything. But what do you want? I’ve been writing for many years and I have no ideas lately. Nothing is happening with the adoption besides waiting and none of my shows are back to recap. I am lost.

What do you want from me?

Things to Remember 2016

Seatowne 2016 is in the books. Here are some highlights of the way we were:

Sitting around the deck all night, drinking and laughing

Breezy days on the beach

I guess I’ll just go fuck myself!

I’ll shit right in your goddamn mouth! (fucking dare me)

Shore Whore ’16 from “Changes” to “Boys Will Be Boys”

Snacks and snacks and snacks

International Whorishness Index (IWI)

The white elephant gifts

Italian dinners

Finding shells and horseshoe crabs on the beach

I’m fat as hell!

A spectacular sunset at the dock

Fancy deviled eggs at Blue Coast

Opening bottles with the help of Jesus

The tractor moving sand around

Taco night

A game of Setback

The deck lit up by the Christmas lights and disco ball

A gift bag bearing the inspirational message of “You Are So Beautiful”

The parade of motorcycles making everyone wet

The sampler at Dogfish Head

Corn in my coffee

Corn loaf

Grotto takeout

Darkness the Owl clinging to the pumpkin

BBQ burgers, hot dogs and ribs

Nice Lady “perfume”

Pamphlets on LGBT and food budgeting

Complementary colors don’t mean shit to you and that’s OK

Seven days of gorgeous September weather

Not wanting to be anywhere else

Thanks for another wonderful week!

I Have Already Had My Cake; Now Somebody Give Me My Cherry

The bulk of our summer slips further from our grasp like a glass of lemonade gone precarious with condensation. We sure lived the hell out of it. We floated every night in the midnight zone until our pores clogged with salt water. We watched for the Perseids flying between stars innumerable above us. We let the sun move across the deathless sky. Summer was cake and we devoured it — asked for seconds, even.

As Labor Day fades, there is still a little bit of summer left. We have waited all through the season, through fireworks and seared steaks, until the flowers exhausted their bloom and the waves were as warm as they could be. Now it is just about here, the cherry on top of the whole summer. We wait for slightly southern skies, for the breeze flowing from ocean to bay, for laughter to clang around the deck.

What We Did/What We Do

Seatowne settles into me and I am never more poetic. So I search for a symbol in every whitecap flaring on the horizon.

This week need not be profound. We waited for pork tenderloin to brown and I reheated the pink pieces in the oven. We repurposed onions and carrots for a salad. We walked to the evening dock, then poured a mixed drink at home. We sat out and ate dinner with the bolts and sheets of lightning illuminating our plates and our faces. We tried to discern through smell or sound whether that was rain that was falling. We sat out and laughed about that moment of upstairs-downstairs chaos in the rain. We sat out and laughed til way, way late.

The metaphors and meanings disappear. It is enough to remember it straight out. This is what we did. This is what we do.

September 13, 2013

Seize the Sun

When I awoke, the sun was still holding as if waiting for me to walk to the ocean. How could I sleep in today when the vacation and the world were wanting and waiting to be seized?

Without delay, I slathered sunscreen, headed over the sand into the waves, looked back to the western horizon to see the clouds hunched in gunmetal, threatening but as yet still harmless. I could calculate the clouds’ advance eastward would not spoil my day for some time, as if somebody, out of curiosity, paused the storm. The forecast said rain all day but I ignored it and went anyway. I put my back to the clouds and embraced the ocean. I will not leave this beach until the conditions make it impossible to remain.

On vacation, maybe on every day, you have to seize the sun when you can because you never know when the rain will fall. 

August 14, 2011

Let's Play Hungry Hungry Hippos

Now we seem to be playing the waiting game with adoption. Our caseworker came to the house this week to interview us and once the home study report is done, they’ll start the search for a child.

I was nervous about the home study but it was fine. We had to answer questions about what we wrote in the application, stuff like naming our greatest strengths and weaknesses. Those are hard for me to answer but it really wasn’t that bad. I don’t know what I expected. I guess I thought there would be really probing questions that would make me rip out my soul to answer them or whatever. I suppose I was expecting more of a grilling but Steve and I really already did that in our autobiographies. It was mostly relaxed and pleasant.

We toured the house and checked all the rooms. Of course Steve and I had cleaned, partially to put the best face on our house (without it looking staged and fake; you have to expect a human amount of disorganization) and partially because weekends are for cleaning. We didn’t get any kind of white glove treatment and she didn’t walk around the house pointing out non-babyproofed things and saying “That won’t do.” She also said the pool was fine.

E X H A L E

I had been worried that the agency would balk at the pool over water safety issues. I didn’t want to have to put up a fence right around the pool or anything like that. We would have done it if they asked but I wasn’t looking forward to the cost or aesthetics. Besides, we have childproof locks on the screen doors and alarms. We also have some experience with kids in the pool with all the young swimmers we’ve had so we are aware of water safety. I guess my overactive pessimistic imagination was telling me our caseworker would tell us “Fill in the pool or no child for you!”

Junior’s room isn’t ready yet, although we are formulating a plan. The caseworker said not to buy any furniture yet since we don’t know the exact age. I’m going to paint that room when we can open the windows, just to have something to do to prepare.

I asked about a timeline and got the answer I expected: they can’t tell us much. I’m sure this will take a few months, especially since we’re looking for an infant or toddler and those children are in demand in the foster system. I believe they will be sending us a list of possible kids periodically. I don’t mind a wait so we can prepare, especially since I know the wheels are turning.

So it’s a huge relief to me that someone has actually come to our house and sat down to talk to us individually. It makes me feel better to see that fat binder with our paperwork inside and that now it’s more visible and tangible than it was before. I remain excited and nervous.

Flags

Last week 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick did not stand during the national anthem to protest police shootings of African American people. This upset a lot of people. Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham asked, “What would have happened if Kaepernick disrespected the rainbow flag before the game?”

Of course, Ingraham is to be saluted for making such a subtle, nuanced point and bringing the LGBT community into this debate over a football game. The American flag and the rainbow flag are obviously equivalent in several ways, justifying her comparison. As all sports fans know, after everyone sings “The Star Spangled Banner,” we remain standing while they raise the rainbow flag and we all sing “Easter Parade” by Judy Garland. It’s a well-known tradition, so her question is not just hypothetical.

There are no reports of Kaepernick declining to sing the showtune from Meet Me in St. Louis while they raised the Roy G. Biv flag before the preseason game. I can only imagine what would have happened had the quarterback protested by singing off-key. I imagine there would have been riots in the stands.

Still, it’s a very salient thought experiment from Laura Ingraham. Thanks, Laura, for bringing the gay community into this debate, for whatever reason.